


Dead Ringers

by Escher, thedevilchicken



Category: Fast and the Furious Series, The Expendables (Movies)
Genre: Anal Sex, Barebacking, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Doppelganger, Dubious Consent, Gunshot Wounds, Identity Porn, Injury, M/M, Manipulation, Rimming, Scars, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-28 13:13:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7641865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Escher/pseuds/Escher, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deckard and Lee look exactly alike. Deckard uses that to his advantage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Ringers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linndechir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/gifts).



There are things you should and shouldn't do in life, and Deckard knows that. He also knows that he doesn't give a flying fuck about it. 

The short list of what he does give a fuck about is pretty simple: it begins and ends with his brother. The long list includes good wine and crisp tailoring, a reliable firearm with a full supply of decent ammunition and the feel of bone breaking underneath his fist, against his elbow, against his knee. It includes sleep at the end of an op but he's not particular picky about where he does the sleeping, just that it's safe enough that he gets six full hours before the alarm goes off without sleeping with one eye open and an itchy trigger-finger on a pistol under his pillow. It includes a fast car when he can get one, but in his business sometimes a ten-year-old Volvo with clapped-out suspension and a radio stuck on some bloody politics station so you can't tune out of Prime Minister's Questions is the very best cover you can get. It includes cash for his services in whatever currency he can get it, dollars or sterling for preference. But whatever else makes the list, Owen's still up there at the top of it. He always has been. He always will be. That's just how it is.

Owen is lying on the bed. He's cuffed to the solid metal headboard, just in case he decides to do something bloody stupid, with his hands caught above his head, and the jangling chain between the bracelets is just long enough that he can turn onto his front if he needs to. He'll need to. He looks thoroughly pissed off by the situation, or at least by the cuffs, not that Deckard gives a fuck about it. He's more interested in what they've been doing. He's more interested in the moment Owen's going to twig, because it hasn't happened yet and it's inevitable that it _will_ happen, sooner or later. Deckard's a half-decent actor when he needs to be. Tonight, he's really needed to be. It's been a stretch. It's been a test. He's impressed himself, not that any of this is about him.

"Uncuff me, Lee," Owen says. He's on his back, naked, in a room Deckard knows they could've never afforded back when they were towing the line in the SAS because they couldn't even have bought this set of ludicrous fucking Egyptian cotton hotel sheets on their iffy sodding pay. He's lying there and Deckard's seen him like this twenty times before, thirty, fifty, maybe more than that, but never this close on. He's watched from the other end of a sniper scope, whether or not it's been attached to one of a dozen of his high-powered rifles, because sometimes it has been and sometimes it hasn't. When it was, it would've been easy to pull the trigger because it's not like he hasn't before, it's not like it's not what they trained him to do, before they decided it wasn't safe for them to keep him. He looks at Owen, but he doesn't respond. 

"Lee," Owen says, again. His tone's firm. And were he actually Lee Christmas and not Deckard Shaw, it might've done the trick. He might've let him go right then and there and had done with it, sat back on his heels and waited for Owen to retaliate. Were he Lee and not Deckard, retaliation would've been an inevitability. Deckard's seen it happen, from behind a scope.

It's not exactly like he can blame him for the misunderstanding because he was meant to misunderstand right from the beginning, from the moment Deckard set foot into the room, from the second Lee called and made plans to meet. And frankly, it's an easy mistake to make when you look at the two of them side by side, not that Owen's ever had the opportunity to do that. As far as he knows, Deckard Shaw and Lee Christmas have never met. As far as Owen knows, Lee's his dirty little secret, the one his big brother will never, ever know about. That misunderstanding was how it was meant to be, and Deckard's been perversely proud of it all this time because Owen's always been the clever one, the one with the university degree and the way all his ops are planned out with contingencies for his contingencies like chess played ten moves ahead with strategies for all the different outcomes, all moves anticipated, all the angles covered. But this time, to mix his metaphors the way Owen hates so he just does it more, Deckard's got the upper hand. 

" _Lee_ ," Owen says, sharply, and so Deckard smiles at him with an edge just as sharp. 

"What makes you think I'm Lee?" he says.

*

The room is number 808, on the top floor of the hotel with a view over central London that Deckard's seen ten times before because frankly he's half convinced he's stayed in this exact same room before and maybe, he thinks, that's why Owen chose it. Forty minutes ago, he walked through the door and found something he _hadn't_ seen before, at least not in the flesh. 

Owen was naked. That was the arrangement he and Lee seemed to have come to over the years: Owen would reserve the room under any of a dozen of his well-maintained aliases, each strong enough to hold up to at least moderate Interpol scrutiny should the need arise - it sometimes did - and he'd head up to the room and wait. He'd take a shower and sometimes, if he had the surveillance in place, Deckard would watch him do it, watch Owen's hands move over his skin. He'd read the complimentary newspaper after that, back in his suit and sitting at the table with his legs neatly crossed, like he had anyone to impress but himself. And then he'd undress again, each item of clothing he removed folded in his usual infuriatingly fucking methodical manner and set down on a chair with his shoes tucked in underneath it. After that, he'd put his gun and his phone on the table by the bed and he'd lie down on top of the duvet to wait, stretched out on his back. Deckard had watched, via various nefarious means. He knew the routine. He knew what to expect.

Five minutes, ten minutes later, Lee would arrive. The door would be unlocked and he'd let himself in and that, tonight, was exactly what Deckard did. He wore Lee's clothes, his shirt, his boots, his jeans though these days he wears the belt a notch tighter than Lee does. When he took off his own clothes and put the jeans on, he wondered faintly if Lee's lacklustre mercenary life with its infrequent work might not've been getting him enough exercise, or maybe he'd just started wearing his jeans so damn baggy they hung down around his arse and who knew, where Lee Christmas was concerned anything was possible. He wore Lee's clothes and he opened the door to room 808. He went inside and he locked the door behind him, like he'd seen Lee do ten, twenty, thirty times before.

"It's about time," Owen said. 

Deckard shrugged. "Traffic was murder," he said, moving over to the bed just the way Lee would've. He'd studied him. He knew his walk. He knew the way he stood and the way he held his head, his smile, all the little gestures that made Lee Lee, and he knew how to imitate them. He'd spent a long time learning, practicing, staring at himself in the mirror while he put on Lee's easy swagger instead of his own tight control; he'd even learned to fight the way Lee did, learned the way he handled a gun, learned his ridiculous knife tricks just so he'd know his part that much better. He fished a pair of handcuffs from the back pocket of his jeans and tossed them onto the bed right by Owen's hip. "Put those on, yeah?"

Owen picked them up in one hand with a skeptical look. "Why?" he asked. The way he asked it sounded more like _why exactly would I ever want to do a ridiculous thing like that?_ than _why do you want me to?_ , and Deckard had to admit that amused him. He knew the limits of Owen's association with Lee, after all. He knew just how far that paid of handcuffs pushed them.

Deckard raised his brows and smiled Lee's best conspiratorial smile. "I've got an idea," he replied. "Just cuff yourself to the headboard, right? You'll see." And so, despite his better judgement, probably thinking _it's Lee Christmas, what's the worst that could happen?_ , Owen put them on. Deckard watched him click one side tight around his wrist and pass the other round a sturdy-looking bar, then he clicked the other into place. He could probably've got himself out of them again if he'd needed to, knowing Owen, but the first thing Deckard did when he walked over to the bed was lean over and squeeze them in tighter around Owen's wrists. Even if he'd dislocated his thumbs, it would've been tough to get out of them. Which was, of course, precisely the point. 

"So, what's the idea?" Owen asked, looking warier. 

Deckard didn't reply; he just joined him on the bed. He sat himself down right by his side, fully clothed and contemplative.

The plan wasn't complex, but Deckard would always say the best ones aren't. The best plans are simple, they're straightforward, they're easy to achieve, not the labyrinthine fucking convolutions of Owen's planning where there's a list a mile long of things that could go spectacularly tits-up. This one was simple. All this one required was for Deckard to lean down and brush his mouth against Owen's jaw, his stubble catching against Owen's with a rasp. All it required was one hand against Owen's chest up toward his shoulder, his fingers spread out wide over his burn-scarred skin. His mouth dipped down to the side of Owen's neck. He caught the lobe of his ear between his teeth. His hand skimmed down over Owen's structured abdomen. His fingers found his cock. 

"This is the idea," he said, right by Owen's ear. 

Owen chuckled darkly, and evidently relaxed again. "It's an old one but a good one," he said. 

Deckard moved. It didn't take much to get Owen to spread his thighs and he hadn't expected it would, given past experience, given what he'd seen from behind his scope or on his improvised surveillance equipment that he'd set up in hotel rooms in fifteen different countries. Even when the sex was rough and they both left the room bruised, they were both willing participants. When he went down between Owen's thighs, he was still wearing Lee's clothes, he was still wearing his boots and fuck the pristine white hotel sheets. He pushed Owen's thighs wider apart and licked his cock from root to tip and made him shudder with it. He flicked at the slit in the tip with the tip of his tongue, let his bottom lip catch against the ridge under head. It should've happened years ago, he thought, he thinks. It should've happened every time Owen had ever wanted it.

"Are you going to tease me all night or are you going to get on with it?" Owen asked, but his voice sounded strained in a way Deckard had never heard it sound before, at least, again, not close on like that. He looked up over the length of Owen's body and quirked his brows up, amused, like Lee might have. 

"I'm going to do whatever the fuck I want to, now you're all tied up," he said, and winked. It felt fucking artificial as he did it, felt fucking forced, but half the crap Lee Christmas did felt odd to him so that wasn't a complete surprise. Lee lived loudly in a way Deckard didn't. He smiled and laughed and drank shitty American beer with his friends and he threw knives like bringing knives to a gunfight had ever struck anyone like a good idea in the history of ex-military mercenaries. He took up space, he demanded attention. Until last year, by way of stark fucking contrast, Deckard had lived life quietly with bursts here and there like a throat-wrenching fucking primal scream. He'd stayed low till he'd needed not to. Lee only had two volumes: loud and louder. 

He went up on his knees between Owen's thighs and he ran his palms up over them. He ran them from his ankles up to his hips, examined bones not quite the way a medic would, squeezed there, spread his own knees and let Owen's thighs rest over his. Owen had had grafts on his burned skin but there were still scars there and Deckard knew there always would be, and if he let it it made him bubble over with blind fucking anger. What he did then was run his hands over Owen's waist and up. He followed the twists and turns of the scar tissue with one hand as he leaned down against the mattress with the other. He followed the scars up to Owen's face. And when he leaned over him, Owen's expression was dark, bordering on murderous, like once upon a time he'd told Lee not to do that, maybe warned him, maybe told him what he'd do if he did. That thought wasn't enough to stop him. But since Owen couldn't stop him, either, he leaned up quickly and he kissed him instead. He pressed his mouth to his.

That was something they'd done before, at least. Not something Deckard had ever meant to do but it'd happened, twice, a while ago. He expected the feel of Owen's stubble against his face but then Owen bit his lip and Deckard jerked back and Owen laughed at him. More accurately, he guessed, Owen laughed at _Lee_. Deckard would've slapped him straight across the face, hard enough to split his lip or tear the inside of his cheek against his teeth, but he wasn't Deckard, not really, not just then. So he sat up again, popped up onto his knees and he touched his fingers to his lip, not really expecting blood but there it was. 

"Mad bastard," he said, and wiped the blood off his fingers on the sheets. 

Owen shrugged. "You don't fuck me for my charm, Lee," he said. 

"Remind me why I do again?"

Owen practically fucking rolled his eyes as he lay there. "Because you're an emotionally stunted relic of a bygone homophobic era and Barney Ross sadly isn't psychic," he said. "Is that explanation enough for you or are you going to take these handcuffs off so I can write it down?"

Deckard wanted to smile, but Lee wouldn't've smiled. Lee would've been somewhere between pissed off and turned on and so that was what he was, too, for the time being. He wrapped one hand around Owen's throat and squeezed. Owen just laughed at him again, half bitter with it but the other half mocking, the way Lee probably perversely got off on, the half-masochistic son of a bitch, and Deckard pushed harder. He put his other hand up there, too, wrapped them both around his neck and Owen looked at him, Owen really _looked_ at him, colour rising in his cheeks like it was in Deckard's. But Jesus, Owen got hard with it, his arms pulled down hard at the cuffs at his wrists so they bit at his skin but otherwise he didn't struggle. Deckard squeezed harder, felt his own cock fill up and strain against his borrowed jeans. He squeezed almost too hard, just hard enough for it to seem like Lee's supposed anger. And then he pulled back. Owen heaved in a breath. He laughed it back out. 

"You always did know just how to get me off," he said, his voice tight. 

"Shut the fuck up, would you," Deckard replied. He didn't want him to. He could've listened to the things he said all night. They weren't for him, after all, and he liked the way they stung. 

"Why don't you make me?" Owen said. 

"Yeah, why don't I."

There was lube on the table by the bed, by Owen's phone and gun. There was lube and a box of condoms, both unopened, and Deckard went for the lube though he thought about the gun; he'd seen what happened when Lee went for Owen's firearm instead of the lube and so he thought about it, thought about the fight that might come next, how Lee hadn't always won but Deckard would because as good as Lee was, he was better. He'd've bloodied him, fucked him up without a second thought but then Owen would've known, he'd just've known, and so he took the lube and he uncapped it. It was _maybe_ what Lee would've done.

"Good choice," Owen said, and Deckard made Lee's most scowling, grudging, irritated face. It was one he knew quite well. It was surprisingly close to his own.

"Turn over," he said. Owen raised his brows but he did as he was told, nearly cracking Deckard in the head with his calf as he did so and that was probably on purpose. Deckard bit his arse cheek as he pulled him up onto his knees, not hard enough to break the skin but hard enough to make Owen swear under his breath. He raked his blunt fingernails down over Owen's back, not hard enough to break the skin but Owen swore again, then he spread his cheeks and rubbed his first knuckle up against the hole between them. Then he leaned in and he breathed out hot against it, and Owen swore _again_. When he tongued him there, wet and hot, when he teased an imperfect circle around his hole with the tip of his tongue, Owen swore again and spread his thighs out wider. Deckard had never seen Lee do that to him, but it didn't look like Owen objected in the slightest.

There was really only one thing left to do after that: Deckard lubed his fingers and he rubbed them hard between Owen's cheeks, then he unbuckled Lee's belt, shoved down his jeans and lubed himself. Owen muttered something about condoms but Deckard was already pushing into him by then, he was already half inside him by then, opening him up, his hands tight at his hips and his bare cock staying bare because fuck, it was Owen and for all he was pretending to be Lee Christmas, he wasn't. He _wasn't_. He wasn't going to wear a johnny to fuck his brother, not the first time, and probably never. 

He fucked him. He did it slow but hard, skin slapping skin, his hands at Owen's waist to guide him back against him. He stopped moving pretty soon, he went still and Owen got the idea. He stopped and Owen swore and then he pushed back against him, fucked himself on Deckard's cock, harder, faster, the muscles in his back straining tight with it and Deckard dug the toes of Lee's boots into the mattress to brace himself against it. Then he met him with a thrust of his own and fuck, Owen groaned, he practically moaned, the sound borderline obscene in the otherwise quiet room. So he did it again. He did it _again_ , until they were colliding with each stroke, till Deckard was pushing deeper, till his head fucking swam with it, till he got one hand around Owen's cock and stroked him, jerked him, did it hard and fast until he came all over the duvet with a strangled sound down in his throat. 

Deckard paused and rode it out, the way Owen tightened in bursts around his cock, then he picked up the pace again. Another minute, another heady fucking minute pulling up the front of Lee's shirt to get it out of the way, seeing his own cock push up deep inside him like Lee's might've, like Lee's had done so many times before him, and then he came in him. He fucking throbbed in him, pulsed in him with his hands at Owen's waist till he was done and flushed and hot and breathless. He'd finally gone and done it. After years of it in his the back of his mind, gnawing at his brain, the thought that he supposes had always been there but that Owen had purposefully woken up, he'd gone and done it. He should've done it years ago.

He reached forward, reached down, reached round, ran his hand over the scars on Owen's chest just like he couldn't help himself. Owen flinched. Owen stiffened.

"Get out of me," Owen said. "Get the fuck out of me. Don't fucking touch me like that."

So he obliged. He pulled back and he sat back on his heels in Lee's clothes, his jeans still hanging open at the waist, exposed, and he waited. Owen turned. 

"Uncuff me, Lee," Owen says. He's not shouting, he's not making much of a fuss, but the look on his face says he's fucking furious. "Lee. _Lee_."

So Deckard drops the act. He smiles. 

"What makes you think I'm Lee?" he says.

*

Ten years ago, before his brother had decided to be a fucking supervillain and so in turn he'd decided why the bloody hell not and followed suit, Deckard met Lee Christmas. 

It wasn't by design. Hell, he hadn't even known the handsome son of a bitch had existed before that specific moment, when they literally bumped into each other on an Anglo-American base in Kandahar. Neither of them had been looking where the fuck they'd been going, not that that was ever going to stop Deckard glaring like the other bloke had just beaten up his little old nan, but what he ended up doing, what they both ended up doing, was staring at each other goggle-eyed like they'd just beamed up to the fucking Starship Enterprise and found Klingons on the starboard bow. 

They stood there like prizewinning twats for a minute, gawping, then a big fucking tank rolled past and snapped them out of it fairly effectively. Deckard's freakish double glanced at his uniform for his rank and his name as Deckard did the exact same thing at the exact same time. 

"You ought to look where you're going, major," Sergeant Mitchell said. 

"You ought to not be a cheeky cunt, sergeant," Deckard replied. 

Mitchell grinned like a stupid fucking git for a second, then he brought himself up tall and serious and gave a crisp salute. Deckard returned it. And though there were ten questions he could've asked, or twenty, a whole fucking litany of questions about who the fuck Sergeant Mitchell was and how he'd come to have a pretty face on him like he apparently had, they went their separate ways. They both had jobs to do, he supposes. It wasn't like Kandahar was fucking Pontins. 

Three days later, before Deckard deployed elsewhere and who the fuck knew where that was, it's not like his record's online for public viewing and he never thought to memorise the places or the names, they met again. Mitchell was coming back in onto base and hopped off the back of a van with the rest of his squad right in front of him as he was out taking an evening run around base. They almost tripped each other; Mitchell fell backwards with his heavy pack still on his back so Deckard caught him by his straps, leaned back and kept him upright. Mitchell grinned. Jesus, even his fucking teeth looked the same as his did. 

"You're a saint, major," Mitchell said, brushing himself off in an exaggerated manner. It wasn't even like he'd even hit the ground. 

"And you're a fucking menace, sergeant," Deckard replied, with a shake of his head. "And you think _I_ need to look where I'm going?"

Mitchell shrugged. Deckard frowned. They went their separate ways again ten seconds later and Deckard continued on his run, but later that night they met again, outside Deckard's tent. Mitchell was lurking there when he went out for some air like some fucking council estate ne'er-do-well with intent to knife him for the tenner in his back pocket, but all they did was stand there and look at each other. They were gawping again. 

"You've noticed how we look alike, yeah?" Mitchell said. 

"I've got eyes in my head and I'm not fucking simple," Deckard replied. "What do you think?"

Mitchell gave him a familiar look - familiar because it was one he'd seen himself make, too. Then he rubbed the back of his neck like he was searching for a way to say something really bloody stupid without sounding like a total wanker. He needn't have bothered, Deckard thinks. 

"So, you wonder how alike we really are?" Mitchell asked. 

The way Deckard looked back at him, Mitchell probably knew what that meant because he probably had the same look himself, from time to time. When Deckard turned around and went back inside, Mitchell followed without a word, without asking if that'd been what he'd meant. They spent the next two hours finding out just how alike they were, rank and military propriety be damned. And when they were finished, when they'd got their similarities all mapped out like a primary school spot-the-difference puzzle, whose tongue was longer, whose hands were bigger, had that time at comprehensive school when Deckard broke his nose playing rugby made that much of a difference, they sat down together on the edge of Deckard's bed and fuck, Klingons might've made more sense. 

They were almost exactly alike. When they frowned or they smiled, their faces creased the same way. Their belly buttons tucked in the same way, their fat and muscle layered the same way, they had the same shoe size and the same inside leg and fuck, maybe their moles weren't the same and SAS Sergeant Lee Mitchell didn't have the same scars in the same places as SAS Major Deckard Shaw did, but you'd've had to've looked pretty bloody hard to know it. Even their voices were the same, or they nearly were, and it turned out they'd grown up about twenty miles apart in the Greater London area so fuck, their _accents_ were damn near the same. And, in the end, all they could say was Deckard was two years older and Lee was maybe a quarter of an inch taller but even that much was debatable. They were almost exactly alike. 

"So," Lee asked, looking more awkward than he had since they'd met, not that a sweeping length of time had passed and not that it lasted much past Deckard's response. "You wonder how alike we _really_ are?"

There was a look on his face that Deckard knew, a quirk of his brows, something at the corners of his mouth and the corners of his eyes. He smirked. They spent another hour finding out just how alike they were in _every_ way, rank and military propriety be damned. When they did it half-clothed and in uniform up against the wall, when they stripped naked again and took turns on top, Deckard lasted longer. They tried it again the next night, just to make sure. 

"Best three out of five?" Lee said after, the second night, flushed and amused. 

"Let's go for four out of seven," Deckard replied. Lee bit him. He laughed, then he had him bent over the desk. 

But later on that night, half-exhausted, Deckard had a bright idea. Maybe not his best, because most of those came later, once Owen had swanned the fuck off out of the SAS and he'd skipped along with him, after him, but never because of him. Maybe not his best, but it ranked fairly highly at the time. The next time Lee Mitchell's squad went out, Deckard was up in the hills with his rifle. He put a shot through Lee's shoulder. 

After that, they weren't so fucking alike. After that, you could tell them apart. 

*

There's a moment when the realisation finally dawns. He sees it clear as day on Owen's face, when anger turns to something else and then he understands. 

Once upon a time, Owen had needed a fifth man for a job, some ridiculous fucking thing he'd agreed to on a whim because assassination was really Deckard's area of expertise and not Owen's. Deckard knew all about it. So he sent an acquaintance of his to an acquaintance of Owen's and he gave him a name for that fifth man he needed: he gave him Lee Christmas, who was at least twice as qualified as anyone else he'd find available. Owen looked at the file and Deckard's imagined that moment for years because in the photograph paperclipped to the first page, just like in life itself, Lee Christmas was the dead spitting image of Deckard Shaw. Owen offered Lee the job that afternoon and Lee took it. Three months later, they were fucking. 

Back then, that was all there was to it from Deckard's perspective. That had been the plan in its entirety because he couldn't have Owen bringing that shit up again and making things impossible between them. He'd done it the first time back when he was seventeen and Deckard was already away in the fucking armed forces, some offhand remark about sex and trust and then Owen'd been kissing him and fuck, he'd never thought about it before that night, he'd swear he hadn't. And it wasn't that the idea disgusted him because it didn't, Owen was his brother, Owen was the closest family he had in the world, he was his _brother_ , he was the only person who got him and the things he did and the things he wanted to do sometimes. He was the one who started fights so he could stand back and watch his big brother finish them and the look on his face had always been a bloody picture, because he understood. But he said no. He wasn't going to be the one who put limits on the things Owen could achieve. He wasn't going to hold him back or whatever fucking idiocy he thought it might've done at the time.

The second time was after they'd both pissed off out of the SAS. The government was looking for Deckard and so Owen hid him for a while, of course he did, what else was he going to do but help him? He was there for weeks in Owen's flat in London, using his weight bench and leaving extra plates on the bar so it weighed more than Owen could lift when he came to lift it, drinking all the milk till they were stuck making black coffees, borrowing his clothes because everything he owned had been confiscated by the government. And then, one night, Owen came into the spare room he'd been using and he got right into bed with him. He kissed him on the mouth. He put his hands on him. And fuck, he'd've done anything for him, anything in the world he'd asked him to. He'd've stolen for him or he'd've killed, he'd've danced the fucking macarena on the evening news, _anything_ , except for that, like some fucking Meat Loaf cliché of what love should be. He's not sure why he said no except he'd said it before and that night he said it so vehemently, so fucking violently, that he almost broke Owen's jaw. He left the flat. Owen didn't try again. And Deckard served him Lee Mitchell - Lee _Christmas_ , wherever that name came from once he'd left the SAS like Deckard and Owen had and he's never felt the urge to check - on a silver bloody platter. 

Then what happened with Owen happened. Then what happened with Deckard because of what had happened with Owen happened. Dominic Toretto happened. And Lee and Barney Ross and Jensen and Caesar and fucking Trench Mauser and all those fucking misfit arseholes broke him out of prison - maybe Owen's contingencies had had contingencies but he wasn't the only one who knew how to plan ahead, just in case - and that was it, he knew. Owen has to know the things he's done for him. Owen has to know he wants the same things he does. Owen has to know Lee was only ever meant to be a substitute. Owen has to know the real thing's better.

"Uncuff me," Owen says, a second time, and this time Deckard obliges. And when he's loose, when the cuffs are discarded on the floor and there are angry red rings around Owen's wrists, Owen goes up on his knees and he slaps him straight across the face, as hard as he can. Then he pulls at his shirt. It's not Lee's ugly team tattoo that Owen looks for first; it's the scar from the bullet that Deckard put there. He doesn't find it. It's not there. The man in front of him is not, in fact, Lee Christmas. The man in front of him is Deckard Shaw. It's his brother, who's finally come to his senses.

Owen smiles, darkly pleased, and when Deckard puts his hands on his scars, he doesn't flinch away. He leans into the touch. He knows what Deckard's done and what he plans to do to wankers who put the scars there. He knows what he's done and plans to do for him. He knows what he's done and plans to do _to_ him, because tonight's not the last time, that's obvious, it's just the first of many. The rest they'll sort out later, they'll having a slagging match in the hotel restaurant when Deckard tells him how he's been setting him up, or they'll have a stupid fucking ruck in the car park after they've checked out, they'll tear each other's suits and get bloody and loud, and Deckard'll probably find out Owen knew all along anyway, even though he thought he'd been so careful and so bloody sneaky.

And maybe, before they leave, they'll visit Deckard's room. Lee'll be waking up in a couple of hours, handcuffed to the headboard just the way that Owen was. It'd seem a shame to let that go to waste, when Owen can finally settle down to compare and contrast; maybe Deckard will strip off and stretch out next to him. Maybe he'll let Owen cuff him, too, and let him have him the way he's just had him, maybe while Lee's still unconscious, maybe while Lee watches them. Maybe one day Deckard will even tell him how he shot Lee in the shoulder just so one day, when he needed to, Owen could tell them apart. 

Owen smiles, darkly pleased, and when they kiss it's still half-bloody from how Owen slapped his face, but that just seems oddly fitting. 

"It's about time," Owen says, his hands on Deckard's skin under Lee's clothes. 

Deckard couldn't agree more.


End file.
